I popped across the border to Shenzhen last weekend, but it was just for something to do rather than a park trip, another fancy hotel thing. On the second day there, before heading back to Hong Kong, we thought about going to Happy Valley - there are two new creds there since I last went – but the weather had been raining on and off, plus their website said that Bullet Coaster was temporarily closed. Even with the two new coasters, I’d much rather wait and revisit when Bullet Coaster is open. I guess it's good that OCT now have this sort of information on their website; in the past you'd just have to go and hope for the best.
Instead, we just went to Window of the World for a bit. Surprisingly, my boyfriend had never been, and there was a new cred for me, so it was an easy “find something to do for the afternoon” option.
For those who don’t know, Window of the World is operated by the OCT group, the same group that run the Happy Valley parks, and consists of various scale models of famous sites around the world, plus a few rides thrown in. I honestly thought this place was possibly on its way out since it was all feeling very tired and run-down on the couple of visits I made almost 10 years ago, but they’ve been adding a lot of stuff.
I didn’t take many pictures of the scale model stuff, but I’ll just throw a few in. Weirdly, considering that these were originally the main draw of the park, a lot of them are in a complete state and have seemingly not been touched in decades. There’s been no effort to update any of them or to add anything new.
Where the park is improving a lot is in adding some new rides and other attractions, with more stuff like a “jungle walk” thing currently under construction.
This was new. We walked past it soon after going into the park, but then forgot to go back to it later. It’s some kind of indoor ice/snow thing I think.
They had a dinosaur walkthrough area before, but they’ve now added a King Kong ride. I have no idea if this is a Huss model or if one of the Chines manufacturers now makes them.
I was very surprised to see the log flume up and running. When I’d last been, their log flume had clearly not been running for a very long time. I’m not even sure if this was the same one, or a completely new ride. The whole area looks very different now, so it’s difficult to tell without digging out old photos and trying to figure it out, and I just don’t give enough of a s**t.
Anyway, we skipped it. It might have been a decent ride, but they did the Chinese thing of adding unnecessary water explosions/cannons/guns to it to make it stupidly wet, and we didn’t really fancy sitting in taxis/on the metro still wet when we heading home. I honestly don’t know why they do this since the locals clearly don’t want to get wet. Even for any ride with a mild threat of a splash, they cover up with ponchos. It could be one of those “everyone seems to be doing it, so I’ll do it too” kind of things, but it’ll never make much sense to me.
They had this silly thing where you could order food via an app to be delivered by drone. One of those “Wow, that’s so cool!” things which is actually just stupid and pointless.
The Egypt area had a new attraction, which was a horror walkthrough with a mirror maze. The “maze” aspect was totally negated by placing very clear arrows on the floor. It was decent enough though.
The new coaster, Machu Picchu Maze City, opened last year and is roughly in the same location (I think) as the old one, but is now a mix of indoor/outdoor as opposed to the old indoor thing. It’s from Beijing Shibaolai, probably the best-known Chinese manufacturer after Jinma.
Happy Valley operations were in full effect here. Single train operations despite a sizable queue, staff doing pointless jobs (hanging around in the queue line making sure no kids were climbing on anything) while leaving one person to actually operate the ride, keeping people out of the station area until the previous trainload had completely left etc. After not visiting an OCT park for a few years, it was good to see all their usual bulls**t still in full force.
The ride was fine though. A decent family coaster which looks nice enough.
I’m not sure what the people living in the house directly above and behind it think though. So weird.
That’s it. It was a decent way to kill a couple of hours, and it’s good to see that they’re improving the park despite the models looking like s**te now. Well, even more sh**te than they were before, which was already quite sh**te. The Window of the World park in Changsha has been renamed as “Colourful World” – no idea if their world models are still there (there weren’t that many anyway) – so maybe that’ll happen in Shenzhen as well. Until then, you can still enjoy taking pictures in front of New York City’s twin towers.
Instead, we just went to Window of the World for a bit. Surprisingly, my boyfriend had never been, and there was a new cred for me, so it was an easy “find something to do for the afternoon” option.
For those who don’t know, Window of the World is operated by the OCT group, the same group that run the Happy Valley parks, and consists of various scale models of famous sites around the world, plus a few rides thrown in. I honestly thought this place was possibly on its way out since it was all feeling very tired and run-down on the couple of visits I made almost 10 years ago, but they’ve been adding a lot of stuff.
I didn’t take many pictures of the scale model stuff, but I’ll just throw a few in. Weirdly, considering that these were originally the main draw of the park, a lot of them are in a complete state and have seemingly not been touched in decades. There’s been no effort to update any of them or to add anything new.
Where the park is improving a lot is in adding some new rides and other attractions, with more stuff like a “jungle walk” thing currently under construction.
This was new. We walked past it soon after going into the park, but then forgot to go back to it later. It’s some kind of indoor ice/snow thing I think.
They had a dinosaur walkthrough area before, but they’ve now added a King Kong ride. I have no idea if this is a Huss model or if one of the Chines manufacturers now makes them.
I was very surprised to see the log flume up and running. When I’d last been, their log flume had clearly not been running for a very long time. I’m not even sure if this was the same one, or a completely new ride. The whole area looks very different now, so it’s difficult to tell without digging out old photos and trying to figure it out, and I just don’t give enough of a s**t.
Anyway, we skipped it. It might have been a decent ride, but they did the Chinese thing of adding unnecessary water explosions/cannons/guns to it to make it stupidly wet, and we didn’t really fancy sitting in taxis/on the metro still wet when we heading home. I honestly don’t know why they do this since the locals clearly don’t want to get wet. Even for any ride with a mild threat of a splash, they cover up with ponchos. It could be one of those “everyone seems to be doing it, so I’ll do it too” kind of things, but it’ll never make much sense to me.
They had this silly thing where you could order food via an app to be delivered by drone. One of those “Wow, that’s so cool!” things which is actually just stupid and pointless.
The Egypt area had a new attraction, which was a horror walkthrough with a mirror maze. The “maze” aspect was totally negated by placing very clear arrows on the floor. It was decent enough though.
The new coaster, Machu Picchu Maze City, opened last year and is roughly in the same location (I think) as the old one, but is now a mix of indoor/outdoor as opposed to the old indoor thing. It’s from Beijing Shibaolai, probably the best-known Chinese manufacturer after Jinma.
Happy Valley operations were in full effect here. Single train operations despite a sizable queue, staff doing pointless jobs (hanging around in the queue line making sure no kids were climbing on anything) while leaving one person to actually operate the ride, keeping people out of the station area until the previous trainload had completely left etc. After not visiting an OCT park for a few years, it was good to see all their usual bulls**t still in full force.
The ride was fine though. A decent family coaster which looks nice enough.
I’m not sure what the people living in the house directly above and behind it think though. So weird.
That’s it. It was a decent way to kill a couple of hours, and it’s good to see that they’re improving the park despite the models looking like s**te now. Well, even more sh**te than they were before, which was already quite sh**te. The Window of the World park in Changsha has been renamed as “Colourful World” – no idea if their world models are still there (there weren’t that many anyway) – so maybe that’ll happen in Shenzhen as well. Until then, you can still enjoy taking pictures in front of New York City’s twin towers.